I searched and saw 12V battery failures are known, but from what I can tell, have just been a warning message which was dealt with a few weeks later when the car was booked in to have it checked.
12v Battery
Not so for me
I was going to a friend's house to demo the car. The outside temp getting close to freezing in the morning, I left home (around 60% SoC) and turned on max battery power to heat it up. I drove around 30 miles to the West Drayton store and service centre outside London to Supercharge. Left it there for around 40 minutes, left with about 93% SoC.
My friend lives about 15 miles away from West Drayton. I leave Tesla and make my way over there. About 10 miles / 15 minutes in, I get:
A minute or two pass, and the message goes away. Strange I thought, maybe just a glitch (I've had the odd one or two in my four months' ownership).
About 5 minutes later, I arrive at my friend's house, put the car in park, go in for a cup of coffee, do the sales pitch, we both come out to go for a drive and the car won't start, a whole string of messages continuously come up in a strange order, as if the whole car has crashed and stuck in a loop.
I phone Tesla Service, we try a few reboots, shutdowns, resets, etc, but ultimately, unable to get it working. The tech on the phone thinks it was the 12V auxiliary battery which has failed / dropped below a minimun critical voltage beyond which it cannot do the safety checks and is unable to determine whether the main battery is OK or not and so, as a safety measure, disables the car.
That is something that cannot be overridden remotely, so they arranged to get the car on a flatbed trailer.
This was the "list" I ended up with:
It ruined my day, Tesla have potentially lost a £100k+ car sale and I'm now without my car.
Whilst I can accept failures do happen, what I do find totally unacceptable is how I've gone from an absolutely fine car to a warning message to an incapacitated car in under 15 minutes. So you guys who get a couple of weeks notice with no real issue, count yourself lucky, or myself incredibly unlucky.
As far as I'm concerned, this is a massive Achille's heel to the car and something that should be avoided. With all the tech and sensors in the car, if it's incapable of detecting what turns out to be a fatal battery issue with more than 15 minutes / 10 miles' driving is just unacceptable.
12v Battery
Not so for me
I was going to a friend's house to demo the car. The outside temp getting close to freezing in the morning, I left home (around 60% SoC) and turned on max battery power to heat it up. I drove around 30 miles to the West Drayton store and service centre outside London to Supercharge. Left it there for around 40 minutes, left with about 93% SoC.
My friend lives about 15 miles away from West Drayton. I leave Tesla and make my way over there. About 10 miles / 15 minutes in, I get:
A minute or two pass, and the message goes away. Strange I thought, maybe just a glitch (I've had the odd one or two in my four months' ownership).
About 5 minutes later, I arrive at my friend's house, put the car in park, go in for a cup of coffee, do the sales pitch, we both come out to go for a drive and the car won't start, a whole string of messages continuously come up in a strange order, as if the whole car has crashed and stuck in a loop.
I phone Tesla Service, we try a few reboots, shutdowns, resets, etc, but ultimately, unable to get it working. The tech on the phone thinks it was the 12V auxiliary battery which has failed / dropped below a minimun critical voltage beyond which it cannot do the safety checks and is unable to determine whether the main battery is OK or not and so, as a safety measure, disables the car.
That is something that cannot be overridden remotely, so they arranged to get the car on a flatbed trailer.
This was the "list" I ended up with:
It ruined my day, Tesla have potentially lost a £100k+ car sale and I'm now without my car.
Whilst I can accept failures do happen, what I do find totally unacceptable is how I've gone from an absolutely fine car to a warning message to an incapacitated car in under 15 minutes. So you guys who get a couple of weeks notice with no real issue, count yourself lucky, or myself incredibly unlucky.
As far as I'm concerned, this is a massive Achille's heel to the car and something that should be avoided. With all the tech and sensors in the car, if it's incapable of detecting what turns out to be a fatal battery issue with more than 15 minutes / 10 miles' driving is just unacceptable.
